Early birthday

My birthday isn’t until Saturday, but yesterday was the only day to go out as a family to celebrate it.  Clint surprised me with a long overdue comeback of one of our favorite pastimes—painting pottery.  In the past whenever we visited a city, we just had to stop in one of these studios to paint some pottery.  I love these establishments so much because they make you feel artsy when you’re really not!

Anyway when Carter joined our family in 2008, we had to go on hiatus because breakable pottery + messy paint + infant/toddler stage = dumb parents.  So after three years of no semi-original masterpieces from our family, Clint felt that we were finally able to bring Carter with us and could actually participate.  At 3 ½ years old, he behaved pretty well yesterday.  He painted and liked to clean up; it was going really well!  After he finished, we had to tell him to not touch all the pottery on display and for sale like 50 times.  We then occupied him by enthusiastically asking him to point out shapes and what band was playing on the radio.  (That was our nice way of letting him know that Mommy and Daddy are still “in the zone” with our works of art.)  There may have been some threatening involved as well.

At Clay Fusion, Clint painted a monkey, Carter painted a gecko (and kept calling it a “Geico”), and I painted a bird that looked like it ate too much (pretty much how I feel these days).  I can’t wait to pick them up next week.  Carter was very confused about why we couldn’t bring them home that day even after we explained the whole process of firing, glazing, and kilns over and over again.  It was so sad; he asked repeatedly on the urge of tears.  Love this age.

Clint looks like he's about to take a nap.  I look like I've been in a sauna.
Carter, on the other hand, looks too cute to not post this pic.

We then headed to our second destination which was a restaurant (also a surprise).  I figured it out on the way there—The Cheesecake Factory!  I hadn’t eaten there since college, so I was super excited!  When Carter realized we were going to Crabtree Valley Mall, he asked to go to the Lego store.  We told him no because that’s what happens when you get sad faces on your daily progress reports from school.  He was upset but was easily distracted by the mall’s parking deck and later the big horse statue that scared him outside P.F. Chang’s. 

                                                

The meal was so good…even if Carter spent the majority of the time with his feet in the air and complaining he was tired.  We tried not to stuff ourselves so that we could save room for cheesecake (obviously).  Clint had a slice of their Banana Cream cheesecake while I thoroughly enjoyed half of the Caramel Turtle Pecan.  At that point, we were going to burst.  Carter’s total meal consumption:  two cups of chocolate milk, a handful of bread, four pieces of pizza, and one bite of my cheesecake.  Again, love this age.

After our crazy but good week of moving, unpacking, arranging, and visitors (really enjoyed having my dad and stepmom here this past weekend), it was nice to slow down and go out with my favorite boys.  Now we await Crazy Week: Part Two in nine more weeks with Caden’s arrival.  Like I said, crazy but good.